Built in Texas.
Proven on the ranch.
Truck buyers in cattle country don't care whose logo is on the grille if the badge hasn't proven itself on their land — even one built in San Antonio. We didn’t argue our way out of that bias. My writer brought me about twenty lines, and I picked the one with legs: Get to Work. Minimal enough to carry the whole relationship, not just one spot, and simple enough to run across broadcast, social, and print without losing its teeth. I pushed hard on that scalability specifically, because a campaign line that only works once isn’t a campaign line.
I'd bought my own Tundra years before I ever touched the account — a "Made in Texas" sticker already on the rear window. This wasn't a cold assignment.
THE TEAM WAS THERE.
I GOT US IN ONE ROOM.
This campaign ran on the same instinct I brought to every Toyota shoot: capture for social from the start instead of treating it as an afterthought. The digital team was in place, so I set up time with the digital account team early to plan coverage together, building shot lists that fed broadcast, social, and mobile out of a single production from day one.
HORSES AND HORSEPOWER, ON A LOOP.
One day on location, with real ranchers handling the horses, produced a wall of short cuts for social — horses, cowboys, wide-open grassland. It's the kind of footage people stop scrolling for without being told to.
more cowboy than you
To capture true Colorado rancher capability, I put the Tundra through actual jobsite environments — informed by my own muscle memory. I spent my youth working in agricultural warehouses, loading hundreds of bales of hay in the hot sun, lifting lime bags that dried out your skin, pinching my fingers on heavy metal T-posts. I directed these shots from the gut. I jumped into the truck bed myself to direct the talent — hoisting straw bales, slamming the tailgate — until every frame matched what I already knew from doing it. This wasn't research. It was memory.
That memory came from real customers, too. I spent years behind an ag-supply counter at Agway and Southern States, filling truck beds with feed and hay for actual ranchers. One regular was a rodeo champion who'd been kicked by a horse and just shrugged it off — one of the nicest guys I ever met.
The :15 Heritage Spot.
A 15-second cut built around one idea: some things are hard-grown, not simply granted. We ran the Tundra's towing strength against a herd of horses at full sprint — not a race, a comparison. Legacy isn't inherited. It's built one season at a time.
Same discipline, different truck. The writer, AD, and producer who ran this one with me — still in cowboy hats hours after wrap.
THE CREW THAT MADE IT HAPPEN.
THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: BRED TO WORK
Same wardrobe as the spot — the drivers' hats, on set for real this time. The white one's still in my house somewhere.